Military Training Deaths

Need to Ensure That Safety Lessons Are Learned and Implemented Gao ID: NSIAD-94-82 May 5, 1994

Not all training deaths are investigated by the military services, with some fatalities attributed to natural causes even when training may have been a factor. Meanwhile, weaknesses in the services' controls for investigating training fatalities increase the risk of biased investigations and ignored recommendations. Current legal investigative procedures do not guarantee that the officials who appoint the investigators and the investigators themselves are independent of the unit that experienced the mishap or that report recommendations are monitored until resolution.

GAO found that: (1) between fiscal years 1989 and 1992, at least 700 uniformed personnel died while engaged in such training activities as swimming, parachuting, weapons training, and physical fitness exercises; (2) each of the services has regulations requiring it to conduct safety investigations of serious mishaps and each of the services has a central safety center that establishes and implements safety policies; (3) the services have not performed all required investigations of all training-related deaths because they do not investigate deaths due to natural causes, even if the deaths occurred during training; (4) the services have not conducted all required safety and legal investigations of fatal aviation and non-aviation training mishaps; (5) the services have adequate controls to ensure credible investigations and effective tracking of recommendations for corrective actions; and (6) the services do not have adequate procedures to ensure that legal investigations of training mishaps are independent and that recommendations are monitored until corrective action is complete.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone:


The Justia Government Accountability Office site republishes public reports retrieved from the U.S. GAO These reports should not be considered official, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Justia.